Ben & Laura Freeth
Ben Freeth His wife, Laura, made a quick, tasty supper in the kitchen while Ben
read to the children at bedtime. I think it was Roald Dahl’s The
Enormous Crocodile. We chatted afterwards in their ample lounge, the
bookshelves filled with everything for cultivated, curious minds.
Watercolours on the walls. Edvard Munch prints in the guest bedroom.
The night outside was utterly, serenely silent. A nearly full moon
whitewashed the trees and shrubs. The effect was altogether so calming
I felt no shock when one of the dogs scratched on my door before dawn
in the hope of sharing my bed. In the morning, I wandered round the
garden with its large tree house and lots of rope ladders. The property
is protected by nothing more than a rickety fence that a fat dog could
jump over. From a raised gazebo I could see the flat-as-a-table veld
going on forever.
But not a mile to the north, down a rough farm track from where I
stood, concealed behind a coppice of big trees, lay madness and dread.
Two days before a hired mob of invaders with sticks and iron rods had
burst into the home of Ben’s father-in-law, Mike Campbell, 76, and
drove him out with his wife, Angela. The mob blocked the roads to the
house with felled trees and set sentries with catapults around the
perimeter. They broke into the homestead and kicked the 150 workers out
of their homes. When Ben tried to take a closer look under cover of
darkness, he was spotted and had to run for his life. The mob forced
its way into the packhouse and sold Mr Campbell’s export mangoes to
street vendors from Chegutu’s township.
Mr Campbell’s farm is for now a free house for a patronage-bloated
Mugabe crony to squat in. And his stolen mango crop, the fruit of hard
work, just became a crate of beer and some meat for the looters. But a
maize field away, the Freeths’ children play, the dogs yap and Ben and
Laura wait.
Back home I opened an e-mail report on the Campbells’ invasion and was
unexpectedly confronted with Ben’s face, a picture taken after he and
the Campbells were tortured by Robert Mugabe’s thugs in a nine-hour
ordeal on the farm ten months ago. Both eyes were blue-black, with
stitches below the left one, cuts and abrasions covered his swollen
face and a bandage was wound around his fractured skull. The determined
defencelessness of the gentle family I had stayed with seized me in a
rush of terror.
In the dock
Martin Joubert, Mr Campbell’s manager, was appearing in Chegutu
magistrates’ court. By all accounts, the farm workers had resisted the
invaders’ first onslaught: they had loaded them up into pick-ups and
dumped them 12 miles from the farm. Mr Joubert was upstairs in the main
house, sorting out the week’s wages. No matter, he was arrested and
charged with kidnapping.
In the small courtroom, filled with anxious wives of the workers, a
young magistrate sat nervously beneath a skew-hung portrait of
President Mugabe, with Mr Joubert and seven workers in the dock. The
prosecutor read out statements from the invaders accusing a white man
called Peter of leading the farm workers. Joubert, unshaven and grubby
after two days in a crowded cell, laughed in relief. How could he be
charged? The defence lawyer explained to the magistrate that Mr
Joubert’s name was not Peter.
No matter, the magistrate denied him bail and told him to await trial
in prison. More than a week later, he is still there. Like hundreds of
other white farmers since Mr Mugabe’s land grab began in 2000, an
example is to be made of him.
Ordinary cruelty
The barbarism, violence and cruelty that swarm in Mr Mugabe’s
political nest have infected ordinary people’s lives. Just after dawn a
young woman with an infant strapped to her back with a towel and
carrying two bags was hitching a lift to Chegutu.
You’re up early, I said as she heaved herself in the front seat,
sitting sideways so as not to squash the child. My husband has just
kicked me out, she said. He has a mistress and he comes home at 5
o’clock every morning, so this morning I asked him where he was. He
beat me up. He threatened me with a kitchen knife. I had to get out
with just some clothes. We have been married a year. My child is nine
months. I am 20. I am pregnant.
Her punishment for being fat and no longer attractive. Half an hour
later I caught my face in the rear-view mirror, my mouth still wide
open in astonishment.
The Times (UK)
Post published in: News